Microsoft is knocking it out of the park lately, with continuous attempts to acquire the brightest studios to build new experiences for its Xbox platform under the Xbox Game Pass umbrella. The Xbox Bethesda acquisition bumped the number of Xbox Game Studios to a whopping 23, and rumors have suggested it might have risen to as much as 26 lately.
Recently, Microsoft stated that with “more than 23” first party studios under its belt, they plan on releasing at least one new first party game for Xbox Game Pass every quarter. Seeing as right now, they have exactly 23 studios under their belt, speculation naturally flared up that more announcements would be made soon regarding additional studio acquisitions.
And it seems that may very well be true. Prominent Xbox inside colteastwood recently took to Twitter to suggest that three more acquisitions could be confirmed soon, cheekily stating “26 is the new 23”. The Verge journalist Tom Warren seemed to lend weight to that, adding that that would definitely qualify as “more than 23 studios.” A recent rumour suggested that Microsoft will be announcing a studio acquisition at its E3 show on June 13, so there’s that as well.
Prominent journalist Jeff Grubb has also recently chimed in on this, stating that though he’s not confident about this himself, he’s heard that the likes of Hitman developer IO Interactive (who’re rumoured to be working on an Xbox exclusive game), Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, and Crysis developer Crytek could be involved.
For now, this is all unconfirmed, so take this with a grain of salt. Thankfully, fans don’t have to wait much longer to find out.
26 is definitely "more than 23 studios worldwide creating games for Xbox"
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 10, 2021
